Thursday, 4 February 2016

Still no fan of the ratings agencies

It was just another crazy day in the US equity market, with early morning weakness to sp'1872, but then a hyper rebound back above the 1900 threshold. Further upside to the 1960/80 zone will not alter the mid term outlook, with much lower levels due this March/April.

sp'weekly6

sp'weekly8f

Summary

With net daily gains, the weekly candle has flipped from red to blue. Another 2-3 blue candles seem highly probable, before the next opportunity of a major rollover.

re: weekly8f: it remains a highly speculative chart, but the pattern IS there. Doomer bears will need to see the sp'1812 low taken out no later than April to have any hope of the 1600/1500s.

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As for those rating agencies...

Watching clown finance TV this lunch time, the discussion was once again about the energy stocks. In this case, the story was that the S&P ratings agency had down graded ten of the oil/gas stocks.

Any mention of ratings agencies now just makes me think of this women from the recent movie - 'The Big Short'

The shameful (but not surprising) 'ratings for money' situation was a small, but notable part of the financial madness across 2005-07.

Has anything changed? I'd argue no. To me, the very notion of 'ratings' from some government/mainstream endorsed agency is still inherently nonsensical.

Frankly, most of the reports/ratings issued by S&P and their competitor (or should that be duopoly partner?) Moodys, are garbage.

Very little has been learnt by the ratings agencies since the 2008/09 collapse wave. Government bonds from some of the most financially corrupt/incompetent nations on Earth are still graded AAA.

I suppose such twisted research merely makes for more financial comedy though.
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Market/Fed/Gold chatter from Schiff

I still don't see a multi-year low in Gold, not least as there is yet to be capitulation within the precious metals mining sector.
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Looking ahead

Thursday will see the weekly jobs, prod/costs, and factory orders.

*there are no less than 3 fed officials on the loose, although Mester is not due until AH
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